


The Game™

by DWatson



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Teenage Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28195344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWatson/pseuds/DWatson
Summary: Pre-series. Bartosz celebrates his sweet sixteen. Hormones abound.
Relationships: Franziska Doppler/Magnus Nielsen, Jonas Kahnwald & Bartosz Tiedemann, Jonas Kahnwald/Martha Nielsen, Martha Nielsen/Bartosz Tiedemann
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	The Game™

**Author's Note:**

> Who needs some lighthearted fluff? I know I do.

When Bartosz Tiedemann threw a party, the proceedings were so elaborate, he needed to recruit a small army of people to help bring his vision to life. He needed someone to DJ and someone to rig the lights, someone to do the catering and someone to bring the drugs, someone to decorate and someone to clean up, but, most importantly, he needed someone to smuggle in the extra booze once Mr. and Mrs. Tiedemann abandoned the perimeter. And since, in Winden, discretion was the only thing that couldn’t be bought with money, this crucial task depended on the resourcefulness of his closest friends. 

Magnus was in charge of hard liquor. He circled the outer edge of the town to bring back a liter of Absolute and two Jägers from gas stations staffed with people who didn’t know him and didn’t suspect he was still one month short of 18. Jonas was tasked with buying 50 cans of beer from 10 different grocery stores, to avoid arousing suspicion among the locals. Everybody knew who the Tiedemanns were, and the children of everybody who knew them were invited to Bartosz’s sweet sixteen. Even people he couldn’t stand. In fact, he took particular delight in flaunting his wealth in front of everyone he hated.

Jonas made two runs on his bike to meet the quota. By the time he got back from the second one, the party was already in full swing.

“You’re my lord and savior, man,” Bartosz said, pulling the tab on a cold one and shoving it in his hand. “I owe you big time.” Jonas pressed the can to his face to cool off and surveyed the pulsating, anxiety-inducing mass in front of him.

“Is that everyone?”

“Everyone, and then some,” Bartosz bragged. “See the three brunettes over there?” Jonas got up on tiptoe and tried to see past the crowd that had gathered around the unexpected guests. 

“They’re Max’s cousins from Berlin,” Bartosz explained. “Hot as fuck, right?” Max was a computer geek and Bartosz’s main supplier of pirated games. It seemed that his popularity had skyrocketed, now that he was the guy who could potentially put in a good word with his hot cousins for people who normally either ignored or outright bullied him. “I hear Berlin chicks are up for anything,” Bartosz snickered. He jabbed an elbow in Jonas’s ribs and winked. “Want me to introduce you?” 

Jonas looked at the girls again. They were pretty, yes, but, more importantly, they were from out of town, which automatically made them as exotic as a school of mermaids. And they were clearly not impressed with what Winden had to offer. There would be a lot of broken hearts here tonight.

“Nah, I'm good,” he said.

Bartosz sighed dramatically. “Man, we’ve really gotta work on your game. A good looking guy like you could pull one of those chicks like nobody’s business. You’d be the talk of the town on Monday, the most popular guy in school!” Jonas listened with increasing bemusement. He’d never been the most popular anything and was perfectly fine with it, but the idea that he could win over a girl he’s never met with his malfunctioning small talk chip and his slack-jawed staring was laughable—and if anyone knew it, it was Bartosz. Besides, the fact that the host himself wasn’t all over them was suspicious enough as it was.

“Listen, we’ll talk later,” Bartosz said. “In the meantime, get drunk, smoke some pot, have fun. I’ve gotta go mingle with the commoners.” And with that, he slapped Jonas on the shoulder and glided into the crowd like a rockstar, just in time for his theme song. Which, of course, was _I’m a motherfucking starboy._

Jonas tried to work out where to insert himself. There were people he didn’t know that well, people he stayed away from _because_ he knew them well enough, people he kind of liked in cliques he didn’t know how to approach. And then, there was Eric Obendorf, a walking, talking drugs infomercial, cruising the perimeter, handing out samples of his wares to the uninitiated. Martha was giggling with his brother Killian—a sight Jonas didn’t particularly enjoy—and Magnus was at the bar, on the quieter end of the room, grinding weed and staring at Franziska Doppler’s ass. Business, as usual. Jonas squeezed into the crowd, and the crowd sucked him in and chewed him up like a woodchipper. By the time it spat him out on the other side, he was sweaty, rumpled, and just about done with human contact for the rest of the month. How did Bartosz make it look so effortless?

“My sister was looking for you,” Magnus said. 

“She’s with Killain,” Jonas mumbled. “I didn’t want to intrude.” Looking in their direction again, he found that Bartosz had no such qualms, and was currently holding court over there, much to Oberndorf’s dismay. 

“You think they’ve got something going on?” Magnus asked. It was the worst thing that had ever come out of his mouth, as far as Jonas was concerned. “He’s in that drama class of hers.”

“Really?” Jonas said, trying his best to sound like this was news to him. He picked up a paper pack from the bar, tore out a crutch card, and rolled it into a tip.

“Poor bastard. He doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.”

Jonas looked up at Magnus, half insulted on Martha’s behalf, half curious on his own. 

“ _What?_ You know what she’s like. No one’s ever good enough for her.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t want to settle.”

Magnus snorted and plucked the tip out of Jonas’s fingers. “Maybe you should try to get with her.” He started lovingly stuffing an extra-long paper with the grind. “You’re the only one she never growls at.”

Jonas felt his heart skip a beat. Did Magnus know something he didn’t? Something his sister confided in him, maybe? It seemed unlikely, but the Nielsen kids were always good at reading each other. Could it be? He refrained from commenting, but when he realized that Martha had spotted him and was waving cheerfully from across the room, the compounded effect of Magnus’s words and her sudden attention made him melt into a putty of lovestruck optimism. He waved back, grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh wow!” Magnus said, smirking in a smug, gotcha sort of way. “You actually want to, don’t you?”

“Come on,” Jonas said, overcome by embarrassment. “I’ve known her all my life.” As if that was an answer to anything.

“You’ve known _me_ all your life, but I don’t see you making googly eyes at me.”

“I don’t m-make googly eyes at Martha,” Jonas stuttered.

“You made googly eyes at her 30 seconds ago, I saw it.”

He totally did, and he knew it. His eyes had probably been so googly it was a miracle they didn’t pop out of their sockets. Jonas sighed and fixed his gaze on his shoes. He felt like a dog who had done a very bad thing and was about to be snitched on by a nosy neighbor. 

“Geez, relax,” Magnus said, redirecting his attention to the joint. “Your secret’s safe with me. But if your strategy is bending backwards to make sure she never knows you have a thing for her–it sucks, just sayin’.”

“We’re just friends,” Jonas assured him. “Really.”

“Whatever you say… Romeo.”

Jonas climbed into a bar stool and, looking over the room, discovered that Martha and Killian had both vanished. “What’s your strategy?” he asked.

Magnus licked the paper and rolled it into a crisp, elongated cone. “For what, hooking up with my sister?” He admired his handiwork for a moment, then looked at Jonas, who subtly nodded in Franziska’s direction.

“I don’t know yet,” he sighed, suddenly sounding much more relatable. “I didn’t even know she’d be here tonight.”

Jonas shrugged. “I guess she and Bartosz get along these days.”

“What’s his problem with her again?”

“He thinks she’s stuck up, or something.”

Magnus frowned. “Is she?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s just careful who she lets in.”

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she ever have a boyfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know anything, I guess.”

Jonas sipped his beer, trying to think of some way to help, and coming up empty-handed. It was the blind leading the blind. But Franziska’s friends had no problems with their eyesight. One of them must have felt she clocked something fishy and relayed it to her because Franziska turned around and homed in on Magnus and Jonas like a searchlight in a prison yard. It was not a particularly friendly look, but, then again, her looks usually weren’t. Some people just have a face like that.

“Were you staring at her ass again?” Jonas asked, hiding his mouth behind his beer, just in case Franziska could read lips as well as her deaf little sister could.

“Maybe,” Magnus mumbled. “Wait, what do you mean _again_?”

“She’s coming over.”

“Oh, shit! Act cool.”

“Jonas,” Franziska said.

“Hey,” Jonas rasped, as cool as a cucumber, and just as helpless. In the time it took her to walk over, his brain had cooked up a laundry list of bad things she could have learned from her friend, and now he fully expected Franziska to kick his ass, based on nothing but guilt by association. The friend of the guy who stalked her in gym class from behind a phone camera, and stared at her assets when he thought no one could see him.

“Mrs. principal's son,” she said, turning to Magnus.

Mrs. principal's son straightened out like a stiff. “Magnus is fine.”

“My friend tells me you’ve been engaging in some illicit behavior.”

Magnus looked at the ceiling. “I, er, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Jonas leaped out of his stool. “Actually—” he started, but when Franziska trained her laser eyes on him, he suddenly realized his desire to help Magnus out was much greater than his capacity to actually say something in his defense. Especially since he didn’t even know how far his defense was supposed to go, how much of his dodgy behavior Franziska was aware of. He tried moving his mouth, but no words came out. Franziska’s face scrunched up like a crushed tin can.

“Why are you two acting so weird?”

“I don’t know,” Magnus said, fresh beads of sweat glistening on his befringed forehead. “Why are you acting so pissed off?”

Franziska smiled a tight, sarcastic smile. “It’s just my resting bitch face.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, to what do we owe this honor?”

“Just thought I’d mingle,” Franziska shrugged. “That’s what you do at parties.” She looked at the circus surrounding Max’s cousins. “And you’re one of the few people who aren’t gushing over the Berlinale over there.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because we’re not desperate, lonely losers,” Magnus said.

 _Speak for yourself_ , Jonas thought.

“That’s good to know. I wouldn’t want to be caught socializing with wannabe pickup artists.” She smirked and zeroed in on the joint in Magnus’s hand, and that was when a lamp finally lit up in Jonas's head, and he realized what she was referring to when she mentioned illicit behavior. “So, are you gonna light that," she asked, "or are you just gonna play with it?”

Magnus’s chest inflated with barely disguised excitement, and he once again started resembling the 1.9m mountain of a person he was when there were no girls around to scare him. He lit the joint, took a hefty drag, and held the thing out to Franziska, then pulled his hand back just as she reached for it. He probably thought he was being playful, but it was plain that she just found it irritating. “It’s Kush,” he said. “You sure you can handle it?”

Franziska rolled her eyes and turned to Jonas. “Is he for real?”

Jonas smiled and shook his head in mock sympathy as she seized the joint and proceeded to suck in as much smoke as her comparatively tiny lungs could hold, as if it were a contest. 

Franziska Doppler was one of those people Jonas always kind of liked, but never knew how to approach. His dad was friends with her mom at school, and still kept some of her bird drawings from back then in his studio. She was very talented, Mrs. Doppler. It was seeing her draw that inspired his dad to take up art himself. Under normal circumstances, Jonas would have loved to get high with Franziska and get to know her better, but, by this time, it was obvious she and Magnus had actually hit it off, and he took that as his cue to get lost. He slipped back into the crowd, a floating, apologizing island of self-consciousness in an ocean of reckless abandonment, and, having failed to locate either Martha or Bartosz, made for the front yard.


End file.
